Earlier this week, Pew Internet and American Life Project released a study examining mobile phone users and privacy. Approximately 88 percent of the U.S. population owns cellphones, and a little less than half, or 43 percent, download apps on to their phones, Pew found in its study. Of that group of app downloaders, a little over half, or 57 percent, said they have uninstalled or refused to install an app due to privacy concerns.

So far so good, but the study took a bizarre turn when examining what the users did with their phones. Pew reported that of all the surveyed cell phone owners, 42 percent backed up the contents of the mobile devices, 32 percent cleared browsing history, and 19 percent disabled location tracking. Since the percentages were higher among smartphone owners, Pew's researchers drew the conclusion that smartphone users were more privacy conscious than their non-smartphone counterparts.

"Smartphone owners are generally more active in managing their mobile data, but also experience greater exposure to privacy intrusions," the Pew report found.

Can't Compare The Two The problem is, the survey attempted an apples-to-oranges comparison for each of those findings. Non-smartphones, or feature phones (often called "dumb phones") are a varied lot, including the likes of LG Rumor Reflex with a keyboard and touchscreen interface, and the far simpler Samsung Gusto 2, a clamshell phone with a basic Web browser and a camera, but nothing else beyond regular calling features.

Comparing usage between dumb phone and smartphone users "is pretty idiotic" since "dumb phones don't carry the same features or risks," Rich Mogull, analyst and CEO of independent security research and advisory firm Securosis, told Security Watch in an email.

While the survey questions weren't "terrible," Mogull was not sure if the users in the survey understood the questions to answer them appropriately. "I don't think the conclusions can be used to predict actual behavior," Mogull said.

Questions Don't Apply For example, one of the questions referred to disabling location tracking. While GPS and family locator apps exist for some feature phones, several models have no GPS capabilities all. The way the question was phrased, users would have answered, "No" even if their phone didn't have GPS to begin with.

While most feature phones nowadays have a mobile Web browser, the browsers are often crippled, said Sascha Segan, the lead analyst for mobile at PCMag. Considering that most feature phone owners didn't pick their phones to surf the Web or send email, it's unlikely there would be a privacy reason to regularly clear the browsing history on these phones the way there is on smartphones.

"The browsers are often so poor at Javascript that the only reason you'd delete browser history is if you share the phone with someone and don't want them knowing where you surfed," Segan said.

Again, the way the Pew survey was structured, users would have answered "No" even if they never used the Web browser.

The difference in backup behaviors may boil down to the fact that smartphones have built-in methods to do so. "It isn't anywhere near obvious on many feature phones," Segan said.

Don't Want to Overestimate Smartphone PopulationPew acknowledged that some of the "No" answers include users who don't have the capability to perform those tasks on their phones in the first place. "However, part of the reason that these questions were asked of all cell phone owners, and not just smartphone owners, is that previous research of ours has shown that some people are still confused about whether or not they own a smartphone," Mary Madden, Pew's senior research specialist, told Security Watch in an email. Nearly one in ten cell owners are not sure if their phone qualifies as a smartphone, so the questions were designed in "an effort to be conservative and not overestimate the smartphone population," Madden said.

Madden acknowledged that the privacy implications of clearing browsing history and other acts varied between both groups. Addressing the differences was "out of scope" in this report, but will be addressed "in much greater detail in a larger study that we’re planning for next year," Madden said.

Privacy BreachThe Pew report also noted that smartphone owners were "twice as likely as other cell owners to have experienced someone accessing their phone in a way that made them feel like their privacy had been invaded."

The difference had less to do with user behavior and more about the phone ecosystem. Feature phones are much more secure than smartphones as there are less downloadable apps, and even those apps that exist are much more limited when it comes to affecting user privacy, Segan said.

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